Once upon a time, businesses had a website to take care of their business and promote their services. That was the extent of their online presence, although maybe some had links on other sites they partnered with. Then the mighty Facebook came along and changed everything. Suddenly, everything changed, and now people go into printing services around Denver trying to get advice about how to do social media marketing. You can easily set up your website through Facebook, but the trick is to make the page appealing to the people you want to contact. The trouble is, there is no single way to do it.
The professional way
This approach is best used when your clientele is the kind that wears suits to work. They might have a sense of humor, but it’s the kind of atmosphere where you’re going to want to avoid getting too casual. You’re probably not going to want to be over-professional because the page will get boring, but there might be a lot of people that use a corporate Facebook profile to keep an eye on what you’re doing. Or, people will be looking for what news is coming out of your organization, so play to that idea.
The approachable way
Although the Professional way is the way most people think they want to take their company, this knee-jerk reaction may not be the way you want to go. It’s great if your industry is something like government or medicine, but what about IT or publishing? You’re not going to want to be too solemn and serious in your communications, because you’re going to bore your audience. At the same time, you don’t want to come across as trying to be buddy-buddy with your audience, because it will seem disingenuous. Rather, be approachable. Maintain a professional level of writing, but maybe let a little humor or lightness shine through your writing so people don’t start feeling their eyelids droop when they’re reading your weekly Facebook post.
The relaxed way
If you’ve built up a brand that is fun and easygoing—like that of a game store or something where you’re trying to be friendly with people, you’re going to want to keep things relaxed. This is great for restaurants, ice cream shops and things like that with a fun, friendly atmosphere. Think about your favorite restaurant chain, and the message you get from them when they send you a birthday coupon. It’s anything but stiff and boring. They try to spice up the text as much as they can while still maintaining the short punchiness of the writing. It’s designed to bring people a little news, a joke or other things which people will look forward to seeing on their news feed.
Beyond these three methods of promoting your Facebook page, there is no end of advice people will be willing to give. One of the main ones you’ll want to watch out for is to be sure you’re not using your corporate account or page to comment on things relating to sex, religion or politics. Those three issues are hot-button topics for a lot of people and if you’re a small business, odd are you don’t want to run the risk of alienating anyone. If you’re trying to found your image on opposing a certain thing or being a proponent of something you can, but it’s not generally a good idea to do this right out of the gate. Printing services around Denver may not give you this kind of advice, but it’s a good idea to listen to what they have to say.
